Contentions

As if yesterday’s “controversy” about Mitt Romney supposedly marveling over WaWa sandwich technology wasn’t dumb enough, it turns out that it wasn’t even accurate. Instead, his comments had been misleadingly edited by MSNBC, as the blog Sooper Mexican discovered. Here is the deceptively edited version of the speech published by MSNBC:

At the beginning of the clip, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell wonders hopefully whether this is Romney’s “supermarket scanner moment.” But within hours, Mitchell’s network ended up with egg on its face after other news outlets who picked up the story were forced to issue corrections. It turned out Romney wasn’t “amazed” by WaWa’s touch-screen sandwich maker, but by the contrast between private sector innovation and public sector bureaucracy — a point that is perfectly clear in context. Here is the full video, via Sooper Mexican:

So far, MSNBC has not commented on the distortion. Neither has the Obama campaign, which, as Allahpundit pointed out, had already started running with a talking point about how hilariously out-of-touch Romney is on modern sandwich issues.